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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26789821">Education</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TempleCloud/pseuds/TempleCloud'>TempleCloud</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Journey to Camelot [8]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Ancient Greek Religion &amp; Lore, Arthurian Mythology, Christian Bible (Old Testament), Henry IV - Shakespeare, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux, Twelfth Night - Shakespeare</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Acting, Biblical Scripture References (Abrahamic Religions), Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Incest, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Multi, Poetry, Singing, coarse language, references to incest and death in context of a play-within-a-play</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 06:16:12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,384</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26789821</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TempleCloud/pseuds/TempleCloud</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Cheiron is trying to explain religion to Erik, with the help of all their friends.  But considering that Erik barely understands concepts like love, mercy, and ethics, while Sir Andrew can't remember anything that's in the Bible, Sir John refuses to take anything seriously, and King Arthur is too weighed down by guilt to be much help, it's an uphill struggle.  Maybe acting out Bible stories can help the lessons stick in everyone's mind?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Journey to Camelot [8]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1871695</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>51</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>‘You know, one advantage to having Erik here is that he’s weird enough to make the rest of us look normal by comparison,’ said Jack.  ‘Yesterday he asked me if the reason I’d had sex with lots of women but wasn’t exactly in love with any of them was that I was secretly in love with a man!  I said no, it was because I liked having sex with women, and he said that proved I was trying to deny it to myself, and he thought King David was probably the same.  So I tried to explain to him about friendship-love being different from romantic love, and he said, in that case, he thought he was falling in friendship, and was that all right?  I said yes, as long as he stopped asking stupid questions.  I don’t know why I put up with crap like this from Erik, when I wouldn’t from anyone else.’</p><p>‘Probably because you understand that Erik truly doesn’t know any better,’ I suggested.  ‘We know that it’s natural for a man to love his family and his friends as well as his mistress, but Erik’s not used to feeling anything about other people, because he’s spent most of his life just surviving, and so having emotions or relationships would get in the way.  And then the first person he did have any feelings for was Christine, so, as far as Erik is concerned, “love” means the passion that makes a man stalk a woman obsessively and then kidnap her to try to force her to marry him.  So it’s no wonder he’s confused when the Bible says, “Love your neighbour as yourself.”  It’s as though he’d lived nearly all his life seeing only in black and white, until one day someone showed him a piece of purple cloth, and now we’re expecting him to understand what a rainbow is.’</p><p>Erik had decided to read the entire Bible to prepare for being baptised.  With his phenomenal powers of concentration, this wouldn’t have taken long, except that he was baffled by concepts like morality, love, and mercy.  Where most people were shocked by passages where God’s wrath against a person, or a city or an entire country, seemed disproportionate, Erik couldn’t see why the victims needed to have done anything wrong to deserve punishment, or even what ‘wrong’ or ‘deserve’ meant.  He assumed as a matter of course that an all-powerful God would destroy cities for the fun of it, simply because he could.  And when a story had a happy ending – for example, where Joseph, after playing tricks on his brothers to pay them back for selling him into slavery, forgives them and invites them to come and live with him in Egypt – Erik would just ask, ‘But why didn’t he kill them?’</p><p>This was why the whole group of us had to spend most of each rest period studying the Bible with Erik and trying to explain to him what it meant.  Oddly enough, Jack turned out to be the best at this.  He might be a very lapsed Christian who had broken most of the Ten Commandments at every opportunity (possibly not murder, or at least not in person, but he seemed cheerfully casual about having got most of the soldiers under his command killed), but his imagination was furnished in Biblical stories and imagery: Lazarus the beggar at the rich man’s gate, Job covered in sores and sitting among the ashes, and the Prodigal Son returning to his father. </p><p>His part-satyr heritage might have had something to do with this.  Satyrs are more spiritual creatures than most humans realise, even though they are too uninhibited to seem reverent by human standards.  In classical times, the original satyrs had been the companions of Dionysus because he had been willing to live with them when more established gods like Zeus had not.  But later on, satyrs had interbred with humans, and produced descendants who looked more or less human, but who combined a satyr’s instinct for playfulness, irreverence, and imagination and inspired insight, with a human’s ability to think and question.  A surprising number of storytellers, poets, and philosophers have had some satyr ancestry.</p><p>Some of them, because they could see the inconsistencies in the social and moral codes they were supposed to accept, decided to do whatever they felt like, and spent most of their lives getting into trouble without ever really understanding why other people had a problem with their behaviour.  But others, like Socrates, who did try to live virtuously, tended to look much more deeply than anyone else into what virtue <em>really</em> meant, and insisted on asking awkward questions like, ‘Is the political system we’ve got really the best way to run a state?’ and, ‘Is the true God really like the gods we claim to believe in?’  These people were called philosophers, and heretics, and seditious teachers, and corrupters of the young, and, sooner or later, martyrs.</p><p>I was going to have to warn Jack about all this before too long.  But for now, it was time to gather the whole group round for the latest instalment of Erik’s journey through the Old Testament.</p><p>‘Can everyone remember what we were looking at yesterday?’  I asked.  ‘Andrew?’  (I knew he hadn’t been paying attention.)</p><p>‘Was it to do with kings?’ asked Andrew.  ‘David was a Good King and Solomon was a Wise King, but I can’t remember what happened after that.’</p><p>‘Solomon’s son Rehoboam was a Tactless King who infuriated the Israelites by making insulting Yokes, claiming that his little finger was thicker than his father’s waist, and threatening to scourge them with scorpions,’ explained Jack.  ‘The Israelites considered this to be a Bad Thing and nearly all seceded, splitting the kingdom into Israel (not to be confused with Judah) and Judah (also called Israel), and built a fresh wave of golden calves so that people knew where they were.  As a result, the kings of Israel (and, of course, Judah) became less and less memorable, especially when the king of Israel had the same name as the king of Judah or vice versa.  Whenever there was a battle, the Israelites charged around the battlefield shouting, “Cry God for Whatsisname...” “No, he was king last month, it’s his uncle Thingummy now...” “Well, anyway, the king of Israel...” “No, Israel’s the bit that got conquered by Assyria, so they worship Assyrian gods now, and this is Judah, where we worship the God of Israel...”</p><p>‘So, of course, this made it easy for the Babylonians (or Chaldeans) to invade, as they knew that they were fighting under King Nebuchadnezzar, and were only uncertain about whether they were Chaldeans or Babylonians.  Whenever they invaded, they deposed the king and made somebody else king and then changed his name, to make sure that everyone stayed confused.’</p><p>‘How do you remember all this?’ asked Andrew.</p><p>‘He doesn’t,’ snapped Malvolio.  ‘He’s just making a mockery out of the few scraps of teaching that everyone remembers from Sunday School.’</p><p>‘I don’t,’ said Andrew.  ‘I don’t remember anything.’</p><p>‘And I never went to Sunday School, which is why I’m trying to learn now,’ Erik reminded us.</p><p>‘It’d be easier to remember if we did it as a play,’ suggested Jack.</p><p>‘Yes, you could make a wonderful trilogy about Saul, David, and Solomon,’ I agreed.</p><p>‘A tetralogy,’ Jack said.  ‘There are so many stories about David that he’s just got to be a Split King.’</p><p>‘Well, I don’t think it’s very appropriate to use the Word of God as material for a cheap charade,’ said Malvolio.</p><p>‘Fine; I wasn’t planning to have you in it anyway,’ said Jack.  ‘Shall we do the bit we were reading yesterday, where David is at war with his son Absalom?  I’ll be King David; Erik, you can be Prince Absalom, so try to imagine that you’re drop-dead gorgeous and incredibly popular and charming, and have masses of long thick hair that you never cut until it weighs at least five pounds.’</p><p>‘Who can I be?’ asked Andrew.  ‘Can you write my lines down for me now, because I’m not much good at improvising?’</p><p>‘Do you want to be Mephibosheth, son of Jonathan?’</p><p>‘Who’s he?’</p><p>‘Well, I’m King David, the boy who started off as a shepherd and ended as the second, and greatest ever, king of Israel.  Now, I had been working for Saul, who was king before me, as an officer in his army, and playing the harp to calm him when he was troubled, but when he started getting paranoid and chucking spears at me, I left.  But I had been engaged to Saul’s daughter Michal...’</p><p>‘And having an affair with his son Jonathan,’ added Erik.</p><p>‘No I wasn’t!’ shouted Jack.  ‘Get it into your head: having friends doesn’t mean I’m gay!  I’ve got at least eight wives, mostly someone else’s!’</p><p>‘So what?  Oscar Wilde had a wife and two children,’ retorted Erik.  ‘<em>That’s</em> probably the real reason Saul kept throwing spears at you, because he didn’t want you seducing his son, any more than the Marquis of Queensberry did.’</p><p>‘<em>Anyway</em>,’ continued Jack, ‘after the Philistines killed Saul’s sons, and Saul committed suicide, I became king, and married a few more wives, including Michal, but she’s a bit of a killjoy really – rather like Malvolio.  And I invited Mephibosheth – that’s you, Andrew – to come and live with my family, so that I could be kind to you because your father Jonathan was my friend.  Also, you’re lame in both legs, because when you were a little boy and had to escape when your father and grandfather were killed, your nurse was carrying you and dropped you and broke your legs and the bones never set properly.  So that’s good, because if you’re disabled, you’ve automatically got the audience’s attention.  You can lean on a couple of tent-poles for crutches.  So, in this play, I think you’ve turned against me, because your wicked servant Ziba has told me that you’re plotting to take back your grandfather’s kingdom, but when I come back from the war, I confront you about it, and you explain:</p><p>‘I did desire t’attend your majesty,</p><p>But, being lame, I did command my servant</p><p>Bring me my ass that I might ride with you,</p><p>At which he stole away to slander me.</p><p>Nay, freely, you may slay me if you will;</p><p>You are God’s angel, I a mangy cur,</p><p>The kin of Saul, deserving naught but death.</p><p>But that I love you, mark these witnesses:</p><p>My beard uncomb’d since you went forth from me,</p><p>My twisted feet more marr’d with nails untrimm’d,</p><p>My face and clothes unwash’d, save with my tears</p><p>As night and day I prayed for your return.’</p><p> </p><p>‘I can’t remember all that,’ said Andrew.  ‘Is it all right if I just read it out?’</p><p>‘Of course,’ said Jack, writing the lines out on a spare page of Andrew’s notebook.  ‘You can wrap a bit of cloth round the book and make it look as though you’re sobbing into your handkerchief as you speak, and ashamed to look me in the eye.  If you were playing a soldier, you’d write your lines on the inside of your shield – it doesn’t matter where they are, as long as the audience can’t see them.  Anyway, earlier I’d told Ziba that all your property was forfeit to him because you were a traitor, and now that I realise I was wrong, I order it to be divided between the two of you, but you say, “Let Ziba keep my wealth; why should I care?/ To see my king is wealth beyond compare.”  And that’s the end of the play.’</p><p>‘I didn’t know you could speak Pentameter,’ said Erik, impressed.</p><p>‘<em>Can</em> speak it?  It’s my first language!  Until I was ten, I never spoke Prose except to my nurse – it was always Pentameter with my parents.  Of course, we mostly spoke in rhyming couplets in those days – blank verse didn’t catch on until later.  But then, when I was sent away to be a page to Sir Thomas Mowbray, the one who became Duke of Norfolk and then had a fight with Hal’s father…’</p><p>‘Wait a minute!’ protested Malvolio.  ‘If you were nearer sixty than fifty in 1403, you must have been born in the 1340s at the latest.  You’d have been a grown man before Mowbray was even born!’</p><p>Jack spread his hands in a gesture of innocence.  ‘So, is it my fault my author can’t do arithmetic?’</p><p>We shared out the rest of the parts, with Arthur playing Joab and his brother Abishai, both generals in David’s army (since the two brothers don’t often appear in the same scene, it was simplest to treat them as one character) and David’s friend Hushai the Arkite, who pretends to go over to Absalom’s side in order to give him misleading advice.  I was Mephibosheth’s servant Ziba (since I could also be the donkey laden with food and drink that Ziba brings to David and his army), the counsellor Ahithophel who advises Absalom but commits suicide when his advice is rejected, and various soldiers and messengers.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>‘Kings, demigods, gentlemen, and Erik,’ declaimed Jack, striding onstage wearing Arthur’s helmet as the nearest thing to a crown we had with us, ‘we present <em>The Tragedy of Absalom, Prince of Israel</em>.  Act 1, Scene 1: King David’s palace in Jerusalem...</p><p>‘O Samuel, why didst thou anoint us king?</p><p>Alas, that royal plural!  For I have</p><p>More wives, more sons, more woes than other men,</p><p>And yet the two most dear to me are gone.</p><p>But five years past, my Amnon, oldest son,</p><p>Had, feigning sickness, raped my daughter Tamar,</p><p>Then hated her and cast her from his sight.</p><p>Some two years on, her brother Absalom</p><p>Slew Amnon, and is fled into Geshur,</p><p>To leave me, three years long, to long for him.</p><p>I have forgot my grief at Amnon’s loss;</p><p>I mourn the living son, and not the dead.</p><p>Yet I must dry my grief with dust of work,</p><p>Or weep for subjects’ problems, not mine own.</p><p>Good day, good widow!’</p><p> </p><p>For Arthur had just come ‘onstage’ (the middle of the clearing where we had stopped for lunch represented Jerusalem, while the patch of bracken and bushes before the woodland started again represented all other locations in the story) with a towel wrapped around his head to mimic the veil and headscarf worn by some Eastern women.  ‘Widow, aye, indeed!’ he replied, raising his voice to compensate for the towel muffling his words:</p><p>‘Widowed of husband, sons, and earthly hope!</p><p>My sons have brawled, and one hath slain the other,</p><p>And now my clan cry, “Hang the murderer!”</p><p>Thus would they quench my last bright coal that burns,</p><p>Cut off my husband’s name with his descendants,</p><p>And leave me none to care when I grow old.’</p><p> </p><p>‘Fear not; thy son shall live; we pardon him,’ pronounced Jack, very solemnly.</p><p> </p><p>‘In this your majesty doth wrong himself</p><p>By pardoning my son and not his own!</p><p>As water spilt doth mingle with the dust,</p><p>So all must die and turn again to clay.</p><p>Yet God, who quickens life within the mud,</p><p>Restores the banished sinner to His grace,</p><p>And will you not restore your Absalom?’</p><p> </p><p>‘Thou art a prophet!’ exclaimed Jack, laughing; ‘Tell me one thing more:/ Was it not Joab set thee on this game?’</p><p> </p><p>‘My liege, your wisdom is as angels’ sight:</p><p>T’was Joab bade me play a widow’s part</p><p>That you might spare me for my widow’s weeds</p><p>That have no mercy on yourself, your son,</p><p>Or all of us who long for his return.’</p><p> </p><p>With this, Arthur ducked behind a bush to get rid of his towel so that he could return as Joab, when Jack called:</p><p>‘Come, Joab!  Upon more consideration,</p><p>We do reverse our word of banishment.</p><p>Bring Absalom unto Jerusalem,</p><p>But bid him dwell within his own estate;</p><p>He may not speak to me, nor see my face.’</p><p> </p><p>‘To show this mercy does my lord much grace,’ replied Arthur, bowing. </p><p> </p><p>The audience, however, was still confused.  ‘So does that mean the widow was really Joab in disguise?’ asked Andrew.</p><p>‘No!’ said Jack.  ‘I asked you first if you wanted to play her as well as Mephibosheth, remember?  She’s just some woman Joab asked to pretend to be a widow whose son is a murderer, so that David will see the right thing to do if he thinks he’s doing it for someone else instead of for himself.’</p><p>‘Are all plays this full of lies and deception?’ snorted Malvolio.  ‘I’m surprised the King forgave the woman for lying to him like that.’</p><p>‘Some rulers aren’t easy to confront directly,’ I explained.  ‘Quite often, if people needed to challenge King David about something he’d done wrong, they’d tell him a story of something that was a bit like what he’d done, and ask for his judgment.  If that helped him see things more clearly, how could it be wrong?’</p><p>‘It’s still lying,’ said Malvolio.</p><p> </p><p>The next scene opened with Absalom, frustrated that his father was still refusing to have direct contact with him and that Joab wouldn’t help him any further, setting fire to Joab’s farm just to get his attention, and opened with David embracing Absalom with the words: ‘Thou mad young firebrand ruffian of a prince,/ Thou art right welcome to Jerusalem!’</p><p> </p><p>There was a pause, and then Malvolio said, ‘Does that mean that Absalom has been pardoned?  Even after he’s compounded his original offence by committing arson as well as murder?  So that, in effect, he’s rewarded for an act of vandalism?’</p><p>‘That’s right!’ said Erik cheerfully.  ‘If I annoy Joab long enough by setting fire to his fields, sooner or later he’s bound to plead with my father on my behalf, just to keep some of his crops intact!’</p><p>‘And it makes me realise how desperate my son was to see me,’ added Jack.  ‘It was bad enough for him in exile, but to be living in Jerusalem, maybe within half a mile of me, but not allowed to meet me, must have been a far worse torment, and the fire was burning in his heart long before it torched Joab’s barley.’</p><p>‘Well, if you had any sense, you’d see that he hasn’t improved and send him back to Geshur,’ said Malvolio.  ‘And I don’t think it’s helpful to show criminal actions being rewarded, because it sets a bad example.’</p><p>‘Don’t talk to me like that when I’m King,’ said Jack.  ‘And anyway, wait until you’ve seen the full story.’</p><p>So, all afternoon, the play unwound from a sketch into a full-length drama, as Absalom schemed to usurp the throne, and David and his court and his army (all of which consisted of Arthur) fled from him.</p><p>‘Andrew, do you want to be Shimei son of Gera?’ asked Jack.</p><p>‘I thought I was Mephibosheth son of Jonathan?’</p><p>‘You are, but he’s not on until Act Five.  Shimei comes from the same clan as Saul, so you didn’t want me to be king in the first place, and when you hear that I’m fleeing from my own son, you come and rail against me.’</p><p>‘Rail?  You mean I’m supposed to build a fence?’</p><p>‘No, you’re supposed to <em>give</em> offence!  You just shout insults and throw rubbish at me and stuff.  How difficult can it be?’</p><p>‘Oh!  Yes, I’m good at railing!’ said Andrew.</p><p>‘Well, go on, then.’</p><p>Andrew wandered uncertainly onstage.  ‘Uh – you’re not a very nice person and I don’t want you to be king because you’re going bald,’ he mumbled.</p><p>‘No, not like that!  You’ve got to be so abusive that Abishai – that’s Arthur – wants to chop your head off for daring to speak to me like that, and I have to stop him.  Like this: “Thou whoreson dog, thou clod of women’s monthly uncleanness, what art thou good for but to chase other men’s wives and murder the husbands?  Art thou a man, thou thing that art built upside-down with thy brains in thy codpiece and thy pate full of bollocks?  And darest thou write psalms boasting of the cleanness of thy hands?  If thou callst thyself a Jew, I would I were one of the goyim, that I kept swine and might pelt thee with pig-shit, for this sheep’s dung is too kosher to come near thy foulness.”  That’s how Shimei needs to talk.’</p><p>‘So if you’re Shimei, am I King David now?’ asked Andrew.</p><p>‘No, I’m David, I was just demonstrating – oh, forget it!  Just go and sit down for now.  In Act Five, when I’m coming back to Jerusalem, you come on as Shimei again and apologise to me – even you can manage that! – and I forgive you.  And then you come on as Mephibosheth, on crutches, and I’ve already written Mephibosheth’s lines out for you.’</p><p>David and his entourage crossed the Jordan to Manahaim, and Absalom on his mule (played by me, naturally) went to war against him.  King David wanted to lead his army into battle himself (probably so that he could ensure that Absalom was taken alive), but let his soldiers persuade him to keep out of the way, as he was too valuable to risk.  Instead, he divided his army into three sections, led by Joab, Joab’s brother Abishai, and Ittai the Gittite (all played by Arthur), and ordered them to ‘Be gentle with my boy, for love of me.’</p><p>So, after I had run under an oak tree as the Mule and left Erik dangling helplessly in it (he should have been caught by his long hair, but, as Erik didn’t have much hair to spare, he was clinging onto a branch with both hands), I returned as the Soldier who refuses to kill Absalom when Joab commands it (leaving Arthur to stab Erik himself) and then became the Messenger sent to King David.</p><p> </p><p>‘What news?’ called Jack.</p><p> </p><p>‘The best!’ I said, uneasily (after all, King David could be unpredictable).</p><p> </p><p>‘Then – Absalom is safe?’ asked Jack (possibly overdoing the tremulous voice just a touch).</p><p> </p><p>‘Safe, in the only way that traitors are:</p><p>Safe nevermore to strike.  So may we say:</p><p>May all your foes be safe as Absalom!’</p><p> </p><p>Jack buried his head in his hands.  ‘O Absalom, my son, my son, my son!  Would Heaven I had died instead of thee!’</p><p> </p><p>‘My liege, you love your foes and hate your friends,’ growled Arthur, coming on as a stern-faced Joab:</p><p>‘Some twenty thousand Israelites lie dead,</p><p>More by the forest than by battle slain,</p><p>And all your sorrow is for Absalom!</p><p>I think t’would better please your majesty</p><p>If all of us were dead but Absalom!</p><p>It very well becomes our shepherd-king</p><p>To leave his flock and seek the lamb that strays,</p><p>But when that lamb is turned a ravening wolf,</p><p>Should we not guide the sheep that wolf pursued,</p><p>And lead them safely to Jerusalem?’</p><p> </p><p>So the King and his entourage returned home.  Andrew reappeared to be forgiven twice, first as Shimei (‘Uh – I’m sorry I was rude to you, but I only said those things because my friend dared me to do it,’) and then as Mephibosheth, struggling to hold onto his tent-pole ‘crutches’ with one hand while riffling through his notebook with the other to find the page with the script on it.  Eventually he dropped both the crutches and the notebook, and was by now so much in character as the crippled Mephibosheth that he fell over.  Jack knelt beside him to lay a comforting hand on his shoulder and declaim from ground-level:</p><p>‘Thy stumbles speak more love than gilded words.</p><p>I see the villain Ziba slandered thee,</p><p>Poor shattered fragment of my Jonathan,</p><p>For he desired to win thy property.</p><p>And yet, as Ziba much refreshed our army,</p><p>Wilt thou bestow some portion of thy fields</p><p>That he may learn from thee what mercy is?’</p><p> </p><p>By this time, Andrew had managed to find the relevant page, and read out, ‘“Let Ziba keep my wealth; why should I care? To see my king is wealth beyond compare.  Exeunt omnes.”  Aren’t we going to end with a song or a dance?’ he added, disappointed.  ‘Most of the plays I’ve seen do.’</p><p>‘No, we’re not!’ said Jack indignantly.  ‘Show some respect, can’t you?  I’m in deep mourning for my favourite son, and just because I’m the most successful royal songwriter until Henry VIII doesn’t mean I’m always in the mood to lead everyone in a rousing chorus of “The Lord Is My Shepherd”!’</p><p>‘And, more to the point, he isn’t really King David, and doesn’t know any psalms, because he’s spent his entire life in a pub, hearing nothing except obscene drinking songs,’ added Malvolio.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The plot of this play is based on the 2nd Book of Samuel in the Bible, chapters 13 to 19, and some of the dialogue paraphrases what Biblical characters say.  I'd always thought it would look good in blank verse, so this story was an excuse to do that.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jack, of course, needed no further encouragement.  He stood up and <a href="https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=youtube+%27greensleeves%27&amp;docid=608003331706781832&amp;mid=F3CFC3A4CE55F3610594F3CFC3A4CE55F3610594&amp;view=detail&amp;FORM=VIRE">launched into song</a> at once:</p><p> </p><p>‘My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?</p><p>Why art Thou so far from saving me?</p><p>By day and night I cry out to Thee,</p><p>But never dost Thou hear me.</p><p>                        <em>Yet Thou art enthronèd, Lord,</em></p><p>
  <em>                        Upon the praises of Israel;</em>
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  <em>                        In Thee did our fathers trust,</em>
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  <em>                        And never were they shamèd.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>‘I am a worm and not a man,</p><p>The scorn of men, and despised by all;</p><p>They say, “Let the Lord deliver him,</p><p>If He delighteth in him.”</p><p>                        <em>Thou drewest me from the womb,</em></p><p>
  <em>                        That art my hope from my mother’s teats;</em>
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  <em>                        Depart Thou not from me,</em>
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  <em>                        For there is none that helpeth.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>‘Fat bulls of Bashan encompass me;</p><p>They gape their mouths as roaring lions.</p><p>As water am I pourèd out,</p><p>And all of my bones be scattered.</p><p>                        <em>As wax my heart doth melt;</em></p><p>
  <em>                        My strength and mouth are dried up as clay;</em>
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  <em>                        For Thou hast brought me forth</em>
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  <em>                        Into the dust of death.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>‘For many dogs have surrounded me;</p><p>The wicked delve mine hands and feet.</p><p>They stare on me as they count my bones</p><p>And part my garments among them.</p><p>                        <em>Haste Thee to deliver me,</em></p><p>
  <em>                        My darling life from the power of dogs.</em>
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  <em>                        Save me from the lion’s mouth</em>
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  <em>                        And the unicorns’ horns that pierce me.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>‘To my brethren shall I tell Thy name;</p><p>I shall glorify Thee amidst the church.</p><p>O praise Him, all ye that dread the Lord,</p><p>And honour Him, seed of Jacob!</p><p>                        <em>He hath not despisèd me,</em></p><p>
  <em>                        Nor scorned my prayer in my suffering;</em>
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  <em>                        Nor hid He his face from me,</em>
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  <em>                        But when I cried out, He heard me!</em>
</p><p> </p><p>‘The poor shall eat and shall be fulfilled,</p><p>And the heathen turn them unto the Lord,</p><p>And fat men feast and shall worship Him –</p><p>For none can keep themselves living.</p><p>                        <em>My seed, it shall serve the Lord;</em></p><p>
  <em>                        A generation yet to come</em>
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  <em>                        Shall tell of His righteousness</em>
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  <em>                        Because the Lord hath done this!’</em>
</p><p> </p><p>When Jack had finished, there was a pause, and then Malvolio hissed, ‘Do you seriously think it’s acceptable to sing a psalm to the tune of <em>Greensleeves</em>?’</p><p>‘Yes, I do,’ said Jack.  ‘Have you ever listened to the words of the original?  “Alas, my love, you do me wrong/ To cast me off discourteously.”  Everyone feels like that sometimes: even kings.’</p><p>‘I think it works rather well,’ I said.  ‘In any case, the original was written to the tune of an ancient Hebrew folk-song called <em>The Doe in the Morning</em>.  A lot of David’s psalms were written to be sung to folk-tunes.’</p><p>‘It’s very happy-clappy, isn’t it?’ observed Andrew, adding, ‘I don’t know what “happy-clappy” means, but it’s what everyone says about Christian songs.’</p><p>‘You should hear some of my Requiem masses,’ said Erik.  ‘Absolutely no clapping or happiness involved, believe me.  Especially in the one I wrote for Christine when I thought I was probably going to kill her.’</p><p>‘In any case,’ said Malvolio, trying to retain his level of indignation before the conversation wandered away, ‘Sir John, not content with insisting on masquerading as King David, has now been using one of the prophetic psalms as an excuse for further grandstanding.  No doubt, when we reach the New Testament, he’ll expect to be allowed to play Jesus as well.’</p><p>‘No way!’ said Jack indignantly.  ‘I want to be Peter!  Arthur can be Jesus if he wants.’</p><p>‘No, I can’t,’ said Arthur bleakly.  ‘The only character in the New Testament that I’m fit to play is Herod.’</p><p>‘Give it a rest, will you?’ said Jack.  ‘Just because you’ve done some things in your life that were a bit Herod-like doesn’t mean that you <em>are</em> Herod.  You could just as well say that you’re exactly like Abraham.’</p><p>‘Why?’ asked Arthur.</p><p>‘Abraham had an illegitimate son; so did you.  Abraham was married to his half-sister; you’ve had sex with your half-sister.  Abraham banished his oldest son into the desert and tried to kill his second son; you’re not very good at being a dad either.  God loved Abraham and called him His friend; why shouldn’t God want to be friends with you as well?  God isn’t a snob, you know, Arthur.  He’s not fussy about who he’s friends with.’</p><p>‘Really,’ said Malvolio in his silkiest tones, ‘I’m not sure your majesty should allow this level of blasphemy, even from a licensed fool.’</p><p>‘It isn’t blasphemy,’ said Arthur.  ‘Jack’s only saying what’s in the Bible.’</p><p>‘Yes, and we all know the Devil can quote scripture,’ retorted Malvolio.</p><p>‘And <em>you</em> know that that’s a very trite response,’ I said.  ‘After all, Malvolio, how many months was it since people were pretending to think you were demon-possessed, as an excuse not to listen to you?’</p><p>Malvolio winced as though he had been lashed with a whip, but then managed to regain control of his emotions.  ‘Talking of devils,’ he added through clenched teeth, ‘do you really think Erik learned anything from all this pageantry?  It’s just given him an excuse to be a villain.’</p><p>‘I’ve learnt one thing,’ said Erik.  ‘“O Absalom, my son, my son, my son,/ Would Heaven I had died instead of thee!”  David loved Absalom, didn’t he?  Even though he was a villain?’</p><p>‘Parents usually do,’ I said.</p><p>‘Mine didn’t.  My mother used to scream if I tried to get her to give me a cuddle when she came down to the cellar to put my food-bowl down for me.  And if I tried to get <em>out</em> of the cellar, she’d drive me back in with a chair and then not come down to me at the next meal-time, and I didn’t know if she was ever coming back.’</p><p>‘Well, parents <em>should</em> love their children, and most of them do,’ I said.  ‘And it sounds as though you loved your mother, even if she didn’t know how to love you.’</p><p>‘Do you think I’d still have been evil, if I’d had parents who loved me?  Even if I was still so ugly that everyone else hated me, I might have been all right inside, if I’d had parents who didn’t mind what I looked like.’</p><p>‘I don’t know,’ I said.  ‘But you’re here now, and I love you, and God loves you so much that He wants you to be His son, like Jesus.’</p><p>‘Yes,’ said Erik thoughtfully.  ‘God loved Jesus, and that was why He killed Jesus, wasn’t it?  “Yet each man kills the thing he loves.”  I was planning to kill Christine, too, because I loved her and she loved Raoul.  But then she loved me enough to feel sorry for me and kiss me once on the forehead, which is more than my mother did, so Christine’s gentleness broke my heart and killed me.’</p><p>‘What do you mean, “Each man kills the thing he loves”?’ demanded Malvolio.</p><p>‘It was in a poem I read once, by Oscar Wilde,’ explained Erik.  ‘He wrote it when he was in prison, about one of his fellow-prisoners being hanged.  I know nearly all of it by heart, but I’ll quote just two verses:</p><p> </p><p>‘And every human heart that breaks</p><p>In prison-cell or yard,</p><p>Is as that broken box that gave</p><p>Its treasure to the Lord,</p><p>And filled the unclean leper’s house</p><p>With the scent of costliest nard...</p><p> </p><p>‘And he of the swollen purple throat,</p><p>And the stark and staring eyes,</p><p>Waits for the holy hands that took</p><p>The Thief to Paradise.</p><p>And a broken and a contrite heart</p><p>The Lord will not despise.’</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>These last two verses really are from The Ballad of Reading Gaol. Jack’s song is an approximate translation, or sometimes mistranslation, of Psalm 22.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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